According to the National Association of REALTORS® 2023 Profile of Real Estate Firms, 86 percent of American real estate firms are independent and non-franchised, and 81 percent operate out of a single office. The typical single-office firm carries …
In 2015, Christina Welch stopped selling real estate. Her team was four years old, her name was on the sign, and she was still the strongest listing agent in the building. She handed her entire book to her own agents anyway. By December 2022, when …
Florida did not require a home inspector to hold a license until July 1, 2010. The bill that created the requirement, Senate Bill 2234, was signed June 27, 2007, and until that exemption expired anyone in the state could inspect a house someone was …
Five months after this conversation was recorded, Citizens Property Insurance Corporation hit 1.42 million policies, the high-water mark of Florida's insurance crisis. By the end of 2025 that number was down to roughly 385,000, a 73 percent decline …
In March 2026, the Northeast Florida Association of REALTORS® counted 6,901 active listings across the region, 3,350 of them in Duval County at 3.5 months of supply, according to NEFAR figures reported by News4JAX. In the spring of 2022 the same re…
Every week in Northeast Florida, sellers make the same expensive mistake. They choose a listing price based on what a neighbor sold for, what they need to net from the sale, or what they believe their home is worth after years of memories made insid…
There is a moment in every conversation about real estate video where the agent says some version of the same thing: I made a few videos, nothing happened, I stopped. Matthew Manyak has a name for what went wrong. It is not the lighting, the camera…
The typical REALTOR® in America is 57 years old and has been in the business 13 years, according to the National Association of REALTORS® 2026 Member Profile. Members with two years or less in the business make up just 15 percent of the membership, …
In September 2023, Matthew Manyak posted a video of himself to social media. He spoke to camera in his usual black T-shirt, in his usual cadence, saying the things he usually says. At the end of the video, he revealed that none of it was real. The f…
Most real estate agents measure success by how many deals they close. Marilyn Gilman measures it by how many she probably should not have closed in the first place. The founder of the Gilman Group at Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Florida Network R…
From a 347 to a 720: What Debi Honeycutt Knows About Credit That Most Buyers Never Get Told A 347 credit score is the kind of number that ends a conversation. Most loan officers see it, close the file, and tell the referring agent the buyer is not …
In September 2019, Marilyn Gilman walked into real estate with no marketing plan, no pipeline, and no industry contacts beyond a circle of friends and family. She had spent the previous 19 years raising three children, and before that she had run a …
Buyer Broker Agreements in Northeast Florida: What Landmark Title's Attorneys Warned Agents About — And Why Those Rules Just Became Permanent On August 21, 2026, a three-judge panel of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the final approval o…
Why Most Real Estate Agents Are Marketing to Only 3% of Their Audience — And What Jess Lenouvel Does Instead There is a version of the real estate business that still runs exactly the way it ran a decade ago, and almost every agent stuck under a ce…
What Closing Tables in Northeast Florida Are Missing — And Why Megan Lopez Has Made It Her Mission to Fix That The title industry has a visibility problem. The work that keeps real estate transactions clean, legal, and financially sound happens alm…
Families relocating to Northeast Florida often arrive with a mental map already drawn. They have spent months on Zillow, scrolled through Reddit threads about school districts, watched neighborhood tour videos, and may have even done a weekend visit…
Mortgage rates jumped in 2022, and Jacksonville’s real estate market shifted from a feeding frenzy to something far more selective. Agents who had been riding the COVID-era tide suddenly faced a test they had not trained for. Across more than 330 R…
Standing on a pile of dirt in a dress, no model home in sight, no professional film crew — that is the scene behind one of the most effective real estate marketing videos Holly Frandsen has ever produced. The co-founder of the Frandsen Team at Chris…
Most buyers find the house first, and that is the problem. They tour a home on Saturday, imagine their life inside it, and call a lender on Monday. By then, the timeline is already shrinking. Florida mortgage pre-approval is not a step to complete …
When Holly Frandsen decided to merge her marketing background with her mother-in-law Tracy's fifteen-plus years of real estate experience, the business case was clear. The personal dynamics were a different conversation entirely. Building a professi…
VA offers can lose deals in Jacksonville before sellers ever review the terms. Sellers often hear “VA loan” and picture a slower appraisal process, extra hurdles, and a buyer with limited funds. That perception can lead listing agents to favor conve…
Before Angela Stancil ever held a real estate license, she held a classroom. For nearly a decade, she worked as an elementary school teacher and then as an assistant principal in North Carolina, earning a bachelor's degree and two master's degrees a…
A buyer falls in love with a home in St. Johns County. The numbers work: the mortgage, the taxes, and the monthly payment, until the insurance quote arrives. Suddenly, the monthly payment no longer fits the budget. Florida homeowners insurance costs…
New construction homes are among the most appealing options in Northeast Florida right now. Builder incentives, lower interest rates through preferred lenders, resort-style amenities, and the appeal of a home no one else has lived in make communitie…
